Food photography is a specialised area and we see many food manufacturers, restaurants and chefs posting images of their food for advertising purposes.
One of the most important aspects of using photography for advertising is remembering the golden rule and it applies to any size business from the smallest start up to the highest profile such as Apple of Coca-Cola.
The rule is to 'photograph your product or service to make it look the best it possibly can'.
You may be involved in a company producing the highest quality product such as Apple or Samsung but if it's photographed poorly potential customers simply aren't going to buy in to you. Food is a classic example of so much poor photography, we live in an age where a lot of people simply take a photo of the meal they are eating either at home or in a restaurant and post it online, now that's absolutely fine to do. However when a restaurant does this with their own food and post images taken on their phones it can have a very negative effect.
Think of a restaurant chef who has crafted and presented a plate of food in fine detail, before handing it over to the waiter the edges of the plate are cleaned and the food has to be checked to be perfectly placed.
That time, care and attention to detail by the chef is then photographed on a phone and put out for advertising to say how amazing it all looks. Unfortunately a photo taken on a phone won't justify the quality of the food. Would Marks & Spencer advertise their 2 for 1 Dine In Deals by taking pictures of it on a phone? Now you may rightly think Marks and Spencer have the budget to have their own photography department and therefore have a huge budget so they can afford to have their food shot professionally.
But stop and think for a moment, if you're involved in the food industry, perhaps your a chef, a restaurant owner or work in the marketing department for a company involved in food. What will sell your food? What's going to increase the level of your brand, does your food look better than your competitor?
For this article we've shown you a very simple image of a fast food restaurant meal which was part of a shoot for use on back lit menu boards similar to those used at MacDonalds, KFC and Burger King. It looks like a very simply image but this took considerable time to shoot and then a lot of time in post production. We were asked to show each item clearly and individually whilst making it look tempting, everything had to be pristine from the cup, the food and even the tissue paper. The final result....a huge increase in sales! We love food, we love photography, so if you're looking at introducing or updating or food images give us a call and we'll be happy to have a chat to see what we can do for you.
